Hey, my life has been rather hectic stressful and busy lately. I am becoming convinced mother nature is determined to prevent me from ever getting home, I fear she wants to kill me out here, everyday harder and harder. I am almost halfway thru my 4620 nautical mile journey to get home, with only 2400 nautical miles left to go. But all the hard miles are now in front of me. I am afraid inside.

 

 

Leaving Florida

Last blog I was still in Florida where I had to say goodbye to the best crew I have ever had and my soul sister Miss Daisy. You can    CLICK HERE   to watch the video of that traumatic event. If you remember I am terrified of getting forced into solo sailing alone at night on the open ocean. The idea of nobody being on the helm and the boat just sailing itself blindly praying I do not get run over or run aground just scares the willies out of me.

My friend Rick from North Carolina, out of concern for me, decided to come help me sailing until I could find and get crew. He is not an experienced sailor but has time on the ocean. It was very kind of him to come save my from my nightmare and I am so grateful to him for that act of kindness.

We had to motor the three miles out of Port Canaveral directly upwind until we could bear off and begin trying to sail. I knew I was making a mistake leaving on the day I did, the ocean would be dead calm, no wind, but I was out of money to keep paying the yacht club to stay there. Financial necessity forced me into the decision. I figured, worst case we bob around out there for a while until I get some wind I can use then just go.

 

 

If you watch the video you will see that my brand new timing belt repair began to fail on me spectacularly..!   Here I was naively hopeful and optimistic that it should would get me the rest of the way home. I ran the engine for an hour and a half and she shredded about 10% of the belt in that time…!

Things were not going well

I got about 6 miles offshore when the winds died on me completely. What I didn’t realize was that the point around there is full of sandy shallows for up 8 miles offshore..!  yep… you gotta get out 8 miles before you are safe from hitting bottom..!   So when the winds died at 6 miles, we were trying to get directly upwind tight around some sand shoals. When the wind died, we began drifting into them…!

No problem, I decided to go check the coolant level on my engine and was shocked to discover the newly cleaned engine COVERED in black shredded timing belt…!   ummm…. super bad.

 

 

Now adrift in the dark with ZERO WIND… and with no engine there was nothing I could do to avoid drifting into the shoals. My life was supposed to be getting easier not harder..?   Silly girl…

You can watch the video to see my brilliant McGyver solution to the problem effected bobbing adrift on the ocean. I had to give the fiberglass repair at least an hour to cure before I dared to try and start the engine. The repair has worked… kind of, and I am able to run my engine with much less shredding but not ZERO shredding.

Eventually the winds did pick up and I could begin sailing out to sea again.

 

Crew Problems

Rick is not a sailor and did not really come aboard as crew. He would not be staying long enough to actually learn much so I did not waste any time teaching. It takes a minimum of 2 weeks of training before crew become useful members of the team. The idea was simply to have moral support and someone to take some of the night watches to allow me to sleep.

 

 

So I was essentially solo sailing, which I can do, with a passenger to help with company and night watch, that was the theory. The first night was slow and bobby and repairing my yacht and getting her offshore forced me to stay up later than my body enjoys. At some point my brain faded away in the electrical storm of the seizures and Rick sat at the helm for me most of the night.

He could call me awake whenever something changed, wake the captain, and I would struggle back to my ocean reality to deal with everything. I was very clear with Rick, as I am with all crew…   DO NOT FALL ASLEEP ON THE HELM…!  it is an unforgivable crime, you will not be forgiven.

I explain it to people this way….   imagine you were on a road trip… in your car… and your friend said let me drive so you can rest…   and while you were asleep they decided to risk your life and property by letting the steering wheel go and closing their eyes for 5 minutes. You know driving at a 100kmh down a highway at night.

Now maybe the car rolls into the grass and slows safely to a stop, no harm done… right? So is it a big deal…?   Everybody gets to have their own opinion on this. I am of the opinion that I have the right to choose what risks to take with my own life and nobody else has the right to force very dangerous risky things on me. Nobody else has the right to risk destroying everything I own with such recklessness. I feel like I get to have a choice in the matter, I have a right to decide for myself and nobody has a right to force such things upon another human being.

If I was going to take this risk, if I was comfortable taking this risk, I would have just solo sailed this passage and took other safety measures. I would have extra reefed the sails, maybe hove-to, kept extra nav lights on, turned on guard zone alarms on the chartplotter. Set a timer to wake me up every hour. I don’t know exactly but I could have tried to mitigate the risk.

 

 

Well on the third morning, just at around dawn, I was sleeping on the cockpit bench right beside the helm. In my fuzzy dream like state I can hear a VHF radio in the background. There is some fisherman calling out…   “… hey… to the sailboat sailing right at me… hello… wake up…   i’ve got nets out…   you are gonna hit me…  you gotta change course…“. None of these things are things I ever want to hear on my boat on the ocean.

With my eyes still closed I call over to Rick at the helm, “…hey Rick.. are there any boats around..?“, silence. Maybe he has headphone on, I open my eyes and see him fast asleep on the helm. I call him again, no response.

OHH SHIT…. 

Rick fell asleep at the Helm…!

This is super bad..!

I struggle awake and get up to check around for other boats, I see none. I go back to the helm and check the chartplotter, all the anchored cargo ships are 10 miles behind us. The fishing boat must not be talking to me, that’s good. Everything is calm, but the wind, which was port tac broad reach behind all night, has now slowly clocked around to the port side bow. The sails are flapping and the yacht is adrift sideways in the current 30 miles from shore. We are about 20 miles behind where we should be by now.

I am in shock, FUCK…!   That fuckin guy let me down, let the team down, and just risked my life and everything I own..! I get angry, really angry. There it is, my biggest fear, and this man forced it upon me, while saying “trust me“. So many men have let me down and hurt me.

I knew the universe was going to push me into this. The only reason I asked him along was to do the night shifts for me, just stay awake and keep watch, just DO NOT FALL ASLEEP, one single thing to do for me and he failed. I touch him gently on the arm and call him awake. I send him down below to sleep, I cannot deal with him right now. I am very angry and frustrated and I will not say kind things.

 

 

I needed to trust him. He told me over and over to trust him he will not fall asleep on me. He told me over and over he knew… he knew there was Redbull onboard if he needed to caffeinate. He knew that if he was feeling his eyes close to wake me, no matter what. He knew the risk and knew my feelings on the subject. Nobody has ever fallen asleep on the helm before on WildChild. Was he sleeping the other nights too? There is no way for me to know the answer to this.

This was a mistake… 

Rick has gotta go…

 

Ocean Storms

In the beginning of this crazy ocean adventure, it scared the crap out of me to be so far from shore you cannot see land. I had sat out many a terrifying storms on WildChild from the safety of my marina slip back home, grateful I did not have to face such horribleness on the water. I could hide from the nasty and sit it out, that’s rather comforting and wise.

 

 

On our third day at sea, somewhere about 60 miles off the coast of Georgia, I see this begin to develop right in front of me and begin heading straight for me. Ummm…  ummm…. this looks bad. Uh-Oh…  this could get hairy. This can easily get dangerous. I have a bad feeling in my tummy.

Whenever you see a front with a straight line, clear and distinct boundary on it, that’s a bad thing. Whenever you see the leading edge of that front have clouds that look like they are falling downward like this… that’s a bad thing. This could get very sporty and dangerous very fast. The biggest risk is if it has FALLING WINDS underneath it…!  You cannot sail in Falling winds..!   Falling winds will pin you over on your side and pin your sails to the water. There is no safe direction to sail in falling winds. Falling winds are very bad.

 

 

I am a very smart and cautious sailing Captain. This does not actually look too bad, the waters behind the leading edge not too whipped up into a white frenzy. There is no way to know for sure though how much punch this girl is gonna pack. Nope…  time to put the genny away completely, before it hits us. Reef and reduce sail area, slow down and get ready for a wallop.

The leading edge just begins to slams into us when I have 90% of the Genny away. For the first few seconds everything is calm as we feel the air temperature drop significantly. I am scanning for signs of water spouts inside it, nothing. Suddenly the wind shifts 60 degrees and doubles in velocity, quadruples in power. I know what to do, don’t let her lay me over, don’t let the surge in power on my rigging break anything. I am now hand steering and find my way to windward, to luff my sails. Let them bleed off most of the power.

 

 

I had my sails set for a broad reach so I did not have to angle too much into the wind to switch to a close reach, sails set too open to be efficient at that angle. The wind sustains at around 30 knots for half an hour. Everything is actually going fine. I am making all the correct decisions at the correct times. We are handling this storm perfectly. I am in storm survival mode for about half an hour, no concern for course or direction, only protecting the yacht from the unstable gusty powerful winds battering her around like a toy in a bathtub.

Slowly my adrenaline calms down, it was scary shit, but I handled it well, it did not get up into 40-50 knots of wind as it could have, it was not a falling wind. Everything was actually fine. Perhaps I can trust myself, have a little self confidence that I actually do know my shit. We were fine.

 

Ocean life

I think sometimes it might be as difficult for dirt dwellers to imagine my life as it is for me to imagine theirs. I live in constant stress, constant danger, live with constant uncertainty and constant anxiety about what is coming next.

 

 

I spend thousands of hours alone at the helm just watching the water slip by, it gets so boring for me. I listen to podcasts and watch videos on my little tablet. I sing and dance like a wild one. I do not leave the cockpit for days at a time, i was at sea for 4 days and 3 nights, and I stayed in the cockpit the entire time except to pee or go get food down below. The responsibility for me to make good decisions and react around the clock has no pause button, I do not get a break.

Ocean life begins to wear me down 

 

 

Sometimes if the conditions are right I troll out a fishing lure to catch some fish. I generally do not fish more than I can, or want to eat. While we were out there I caught a nice sized tuna within about 2 hours. The bloodbath is always horrible, when I close my eyes I can see my hands covered in blood after the murder. The scene never makes me feel good. The fish is always delicious though.

 

 

WildChild had a long difficult slog for the last 20 miles to get into Charleston South Carolina after a long exhausting time at sea. The winds would not cooperate and the current kept pushing me away from the channel. I started to scream into the wind at mother to just cut me some fucking slack you bitch…!

Ahhhhh…..  it took 12 hours to go the last 20 miles to get in to the safety of the harbour. Honestly… it was horrible and after that much time at sea all I wanted was to drop the hook, eat and sleep, but mother did not want to allow it.

Sailing can be very frustrating sometimes

 

Chartplotter Problems

Navionics is a rather evil company and I am starting to hate them. The evil American Corporate executive in charge decided the best way to maximize corporate profits, was to force everyone into paying for yearly subscriptions. They used to just sell you the app or charts or data and you had it for life.

Five years ago, when I was setting WildChild up for this huge adventure to sail around the world, I paid Navionics $2000 for all the charts for planet earth, I had planned to circumnavigate. I paid them plenty and before they had their stupid annual subscription ideas. I owned the charts and data outright.

My B&G Zeus 3 9 inch chartplotter has 2 micro SD slots in it to hold 2 chart cards at a time. I have had the Canada & US card in there for years beside the Caribbean chart card I have been using for the last 3 years. So as I have been sailing north, my chartplotter should have switched automatically from the caribbean card to the American charts.

When I sailed from the Bahamas to Cape Canaveral Florida I had good clear active chart data for that port. What I didn’t know was that was the upper limit of the data for the Caribbean charts. As we were sailing ever northward, outside of the upper limit of the caribbean card, far offshore for days, the US card did not activate…! When I began angling towards the Charleston harbour I had no chart data for it…!

Ummm…. I am suddenly entering a foreign unfamiliar port blind…!   ummm… this is not good…!

Good Captains always have backup plans. I had specifically spent extra money to have the Navionics app on my crappy walmart tablet and paid Navionics their stupid annual subscription fee for the year to see the US charts I had already paid them for several times already.  Once I realize the chartplotter failure, I break out the backup tablet with charts and use them to enter the shallow heavy current port safely.

I was just forced into giving Navionics another $300 to replace the charts because the chip I had paid for had some weird defect in it, physically failed. No reasoning with the evil corporation, no customer service to talk to, just a faceless A.I. online with no option for human contact or reason. They have the financial rape all wrapped up into a tide bow, I bend over and take their corporate wallet raping with a grimace.

Navionics is just so evil, I hate them

 

Charleston Harbour

I needed to find a place to anchor inside Charleston harbour close enough for me to access land at a dinghy dock. I went up the southern branch into the Ashley river to get 0.7nm from the marinas there. I needed to get Rick safely on his way back home and my next crew Lady Valerie was coming to help me next. She is a sailing instructor from New York City and seems very sweet and kind, nice works well for me.

I do not want you to ever get the impression that I am perfect. I still make mistakes and do not hide them from you. When we arrived exhausted and very worn down from 4 days at sea, I had to figure out where to drop anchor without good data for the area. I had to anchor on the edge of the icw, and it is really important to the local police that your boat does NOT swing into the channel during the current changes.

To err on the side of caution I got way off to the side of the channel as far as I could. Found 13 feet of water and dropped my hooks, sentinel anchor added because the soft mud here is known for dragging anchors, and to reduce my swing radius. Yacht all secured I was exhausted and went down below for the first time in days to kick off my lifejacket and just rest.

The next morning I am watching local American TV, a very weird experience all on its own, when the motion of the boat kinda feels funny. I run up on deck and look around, something is wrong. WildChild is not facing the same way as the other anchored yachts around? She does not seem to be moving around freely anymore..?

 

 

uh-ohhh…  I know this one. I go turn on my NMEA bus to get a depth reading to confirm. Yep… I have pinned my keel into the soft mud on the bottom during this extra low tide..!   My bad. When I was doing my tide depth calculations the day before I made math errors in my head. Miscalculated, missed the extra low half a foot drop the next day below MLW.

I was so worried about getting into trouble for swinging into the icw channel I erred on the side of distance from edge, and got into waters too shallow for the weirdly steep 6.5 foot tides here. I solo lifted my anchors and moved WildChild 100 feet closer to the channel and reset my hooks into 18 feet of water. Fixed my mistake.

My bad…

 

Charleston Help

If any of you have been following along for a long time, you will remember a lady I had crew for me about a year and half ago named Candy. Well I was texting with her and when she heard where I was she said her brother lived there and he would be happy to help out a fellow sailor. She put me into contact with brother John.

 

 

I got Rick safely to shore and he found his way to the bus station to head home. The next day I dinghied alone to shore to meet brother John. I am always respectful of including other people into my blogs, I do not want to invade John privacy or life, but may I say what a delightful human being, as his sister Candy says..   “…John is one of the good humans…“.

This complete stranger drove me all around Charleston for half a day to find things I needed. I now have the last and only 2 timing belts for my engine in the entire great Charleston area. He brought me to a West Marine to pay Navionics for another new chart Micro SD card. Now I can see my way home again. He helped me find this amazing place that specializes in gaskets and rubber materials so I could find the correct rubber to remake yet another gasket for my dinghy engine carb bowl.

 

 

Interesting and random story that speaks to American culture. This complete stranger John, happily helps out this lost sailor girl. He drives me way out to the edge of town to find the most perfect store to solve my gasket rubber problem. We go inside and speak to the lovely and helpful people working there. The girl says “…yeah, no problem… I gotcha…” and disappears into the back for a short while.

While I am standing around waiting, just talking sailor talk with John, an employee quietly walks over to me, hands me a free box of girl guide cookies, smiles and walks away, asking for nothing in return. The girl comes back out with a large 2 foot by 2 foot sheet of the perfect rubber material and says “…will this do..?”  Then she also hands me this blue high temp specialized gasket maker material that can be used for radiator systems and all kinds of engine things and says “…this might help too…“.

 

 

I am just amazed, I have spent months in the Caribbean searching far and wide for exactly this impossible to find material and POOF… like magic the solution finally falls into my hands. With extreme gratitude and joy I paise her so much for saving me and ask her how much will all this cost…?   With a soft and pleasant smile on her face she says “…don’t worry about it… nothing… these are cut off scrapes.. they are free…”  Tears start trickling down my cheeks and I ask if I can hug this angel.

This is the spirit of the good Americans

John helped me provision and then took me out for dinner..! I have now been blocked by my bank from getting access to my money in my bank accounts. Cash on hand is almost depleted and I am having a hard time paying for things. John paid for my spare timing belts and some JB weld to try and fix my broken engine pulley with.

Wow huh…?   

I was just amazed at my day. 

 

Dinghy Rescue

After John dropped me off back at the marina that day I was having a great day. I returned to find my little pinky dinghy named Penny right where I left her and got her ready to take me home. Except… she just refused..!  again…!   Dinghy engine ran perfectly to get me to shore, but just refused to start to get me home. Yeah.. this seems about right.

The winds were pretty strong and the river current was rather strong at the time. Rowing the 0,7 nautical miles back home was not going to be very safe nor very likely to succeed. I was in a bad position again.

Other sailors at the dinghy dock saw me having problems and getting frustrated with my dinghy engine, and very kindly offered to tow me home. God and the angels always seem to provide when I am down. I was so grateful for the help and I got to meet Luigi and his Rhodesian father.

 

 

Luigi is a wild child for sure, I like wild children. He is young ish like me and has this big thick wild bushy beard. He talks a lot and has an excited wild energy like a hyper active kid. He swills beer and loves to tell wild stories of his adventures.

When he finally gets me home I invite him onboard for a rum punch to say thank you for rescuing me, I could not have rowed home against that wind and current. Weirdly he tied up his dinghy off my starboard davit and climbs up the davit to the screened in sides of the cockpit, realizes he cannot get in that way, and monkeys around to the ladder on the stern.

Unbeknownst to me, the man stands on the small  wooden platform I have mounted in the back that holds my spare propane tank. the light shelf never designed to hold the weight of a full grown man. Luigi breaks the shelf off and then never bothers to tell me. I didn’t discover it until the next day when I went to shore to pick up Valerie.

If a girl invites you onto her boat for a drink…   and you break her boat… you should at least tell her… it is only polite.

 

The Journey Home Continues

I have spent the last several days here in Charleston knocking things off my to-do list to get ready for the next jump. The backup wheel drive autopilot is grinding now and not releasing its grip to go into neutral anymore,  making the wheel hard to turn. Spent most of yesterday morning trying to fix that problem, and losing.

 

 

My windlass has been grindy and dying lately so I decided to open that up to investigate. Very depressing news, the very expensive LEWMAR windlass casing has not been very ocean proof. Salt water penetrated the casing and been rusting the electric motor inside away..!  There is another thousand bucks I don’t have to repair it… grrr…

WildChild is getting tired, the relentless damage of the salty ocean is beginning to take its toll on her. She needs money love and effort invested into her. I have no money to spend to fix her up. The two of us are becoming worn down tired salty ocean rats in desperate need of a rest, with no rest in sight, 2400 harder miles left to go.

 

 

Two days ago I picked up my next crew Lady Valerie. She is going to help me continue the journey towards home for awhile. So far everything seems to be going along very well. Fingers crossed this delightful lady does well on my team facing the open ocean with me.

It is looking like tomorrow we jump back out into the open ocean to make another 200 mile passage up to Moorehead city North Carolina to stage for the very dangerous Cape Hatteras passage next. My weather window is not very long and this might not go great. We are looking at starting out in light headwinds tomorrow that should switch to wonderful broad reach winds for Thursday night and Friday. We have to get 200 miles which is about 28-38 hours at sea. I am hoping we arrive by early Saturday morning because the winds get shitty around that time, time to hide again.

 

 

It has been so unbearably hot here, I am told weirdly uncharacteristically hot here lately. Hotter than body temp and 70-80% humidity on the water. I am praying that soon, when I round Cape Hatteras, I might finally get a break from the oppressive unbearable heat that has dominated my tropical existence for the last 3 years..?

Even Valerie is melting on the boat down here too, it’s not just me, it is truly hot down here on the water. She says it is so hot you just don’t want to move or do anything…  I hear ya sister… no need to tell me… this oppressive heat has been the story of my life for the last 3 years…  I miss snow…

***

 

can you hear it …?

faintly in the distance…

….  let’s go sailing… let’s go….

….  let’s go sailing… let’s go….

….  let’s go sailing… let’s go….

 

Cheers sailors and sailing fans

Wild Captain Lexi

 

slowly being broken down by the ocean… dying out here….